“You are watching the house of your patron,” she said, drily.
“Patron no longer!” Saton exclaimed, rolling himself another cigarette. “We are enemies, declared enemies—so far as he is concerned, at any rate.”
“You are a fool!” the woman said. “He might still have been useful. You quarrel with people as though it were worth the trouble. To speak angry words is the most foolish thing I know.”
Saton glanced at the clock upon the mantelpiece.
“I am going out for an hour,” he said.
“To Beauleys?” she asked, mockingly.
“Somewhere near there,” he answered. “Good night!”
He strolled out, hatless, and with no covering over his thin black dinner-coat. He crossed the meadow, and climbed the little range of broken, rocky hills, from which one could see down even into the flower-gardens of Beauleys. He could see there no sign of disturbance, save that there were two motor-cars before the door. Slowly he made his way to the lodge gates, and passing through approached the house. There were many lights burning. A certain repressed air of excitement was certainly visible. Saton longed, yet dared not, to ask for news from the people at the lodge. At any rate, the blinds were still up, and the doctors there. Probably the man was alive. Perhaps, even, he might recover!
He struck off from the drive, and followed a narrow path, which led at first between two great banks of rhododendrons, and finally wound a circuitous way through an old and magnificent shrubbery. He reached a path whence he could command a view of the house, and where he was himself unseen. He looked at his watch. He was five minutes late, but as yet there was no sign of Lois. He composed himself to wait, watching the birds come home to roost, and the insects, whom the heat had brought out of the earth, crawl away into oblivion. The air was sweet with the smell of flowers. From a little further afield came the more pungent odor of a fire of weeds. The great front of the house, ablaze though it was with lights, seemed almost deserted. No one entered or issued from the hall door.